Here is an article I found about Open Text's search engine technology:
February 12, 1996, Issue: 670
Section: emerging technologies
Intelligent agents seek place on Web --Technology crucial to managing Internet
By DIANA HWANG
Boston-With boatloads of information being put daily on the Internet,
finding specific pieces of information in a timely fashion can be a challenge for anyone.
Search-engine technology from several companies including Verity Inc.,
Architext Software Inc. and Open Text Corp., are increasingly becoming
important Internet tools when it comes to pinpointing the right information. For the most part, search engines allow one to type a request, and it will look through the vast warehouse of data on the World Wide Web to pull up the needed information.
But over the next few years, the industry should begin seeing a transformation of the World Wide Web from what was once a passive network into a truly active entity because of intelligent-agent technology.
"Agent technology is crucial because the Internet is too large and
disorganized for any individual human to get a grip on it individually," said Tim Bray, senior vice president of technology and co-founder of Open Text Corp., Waterloo, Ontario.
"Active agents is one of the next big things we're going to see on the
Internet," said Geoffrey Bock, senior consultant, Patricia Seybold Group, Boston. "What we have now is everyone suffering from infoglut."
For VARs investigating opportunities in using agent technology, a push by vendors is seen as becoming a necessity to ensure its success. Verity will launch a new channel program within the next month while Open Text offers an API that would help VARs develop customized solutions.
For its part, General Magic Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., unveiled a pre-release version of its Telescript Active Web tool to enable VARs and developers to create agent-based applications. The developer tool comes as part of the vendor's commitment to its Open Telescript Initiative launched last year.
Furthermore, Architext Software, Mountain View, Calif., is working on a software developer's kit, although that is not yet available for customers.
Agents can basically be thought of as a small, mobile program consisting of software code that goes out to get data on behalf of a VAR or end user, for example.
"The fundamental aspect of an agent is that it brings you the information you want," said Joe Kraus, president of Architext.
What makes active-agent technology different is that it can potentially take an action or perform a specific task based on the content of the requested data. But the idea of an agent working for someone still is in the early stages.
"People think of agents as a program that wanders around that does
weird, neat things. That doesn't exist," said Steve Zocchi, director of Internet marketing at Verity, Mountain View, Calif.
But what does exist today are agent-based rules that still are very
powerful. Verity's Topic agent server product allows a VAR to watch a
continual stream of data, such as a newsfeed, and provide definitions to pull specific information.
Likewise, Bray said Open Text's search product uses "agents called
robots that scan the Internet all the time on a parallel basis. We've indexed million of pages."
The next step, however, would be for an agent to take some kind of
action based on the content of the information. "The important thing about agents is the proactivity," according to Bray. However, "what none of us is good enough at yet is detecting when changes have happened."
This is the scenario General Magic likes to paint when it dicusses a
distributed model for its Telescript communications technology.
"You can turn a manual process into an automated one where manual
surfing is supplanted by a set of software agents that know your profile and know what information to pull for you," said George Fan, director of Telescript product marketing.
In addition, the company recently demonstrated interoperability between Telescript and Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Java programming language at the Demo '96 show. Java applets can launch a Telescript agent, while, on the other hand, the Telescript agent downloads Java applets, said Fan.
In addition to sifting through vast mounts of information, one of the
benefits to providing agent technology for the Internet is its ability to personalize an agent to satisfy your needs.
"Agent technology can personalize a look and feel [of a service] or
location," said Verity's Zocchi. For instance, a VAR can build their own personal home page by personalizing the agent service and can monitor changes to stock prices for certain companies or news about a specific industry.
Verity signed a deal with General Magic last fall to work more closely in bringing their respective technologies together.
Despite the lure over having an agent perform tasks or monitor Web sites, issues such as security always are present when it comes to the Internet.
"There are lots of security considerations," said Kim Polese, marketing manager at Sun, Mountain View. "It's more complex to build an agent-based system than it is to build the kind of system that we have in Java today."
In addition, to make agent technology happen, several things need to
occur. On one level, there is a need for enabling technologies to actually understand the content while on another level, there is a need for business models and Web sites to actually deploy the technology, said Seybold Group's Bock.
"The industry still has not done well in delivering intelligence," added OpenText's Bray. |
